Gordon Getty debates Trump’s mental illness diagnoses in released Epstein files
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: Emails from the 20,000-page Epstein document release by the House Oversight Committee earlier this month revealed that billionaire heir Gordon Getty questioned President Donald Trump's mental fitness.
Although Getty has donated to several anti-Trump political groups over the years, he had never publicly criticized Trump in this manner. His comments surfaced only through the candid internal messages made public in the document dump.
Gordon Getty attended The White Election performance at Lincoln Center in New York in 2012 (Rob Kim/Getty Images)Gordon Getty’s private assessment of Donald Trump
Getty, once listed as the richest man in America, shared his concerns about Trump in undated emails from around March 2018 that appeared in the Epstein files.
In one message, he warned that “we have a psychopath or sociopath or malignant narcissist or narcissist or Mach (Machiavellian) in the White House, whether or not those categories grade into a continuum.”
He argued that if his assessment were accurate, the United States faced “a different and deeper crisis” than most Americans realized. To him, the issue was not limited to politics or partisanship. It was about whether the country had a leader capable of exercising empathy, judgment, and responsibility.
Getty stressed that the president, holding what he called the role of “the world’s number one fiduciary,” should not be someone lacking empathy or remorse. In his view, those traits were especially dangerous in a position with the ability to influence global stability and the national economy.
He urged his circle, a private email list he referred to as the “Gruterites,” to raise awareness. He even floated the idea of writing a book or a collection of essays, inspired by Paul J. Zak’s 'Moral Markets: The Critical Role of Values in the Economy,' to warn the public about the risks he believed Trump posed to America’s economic and institutional framework.
“A mass market book would be even better if one of us is up for it and up to it,” he wrote.
Gordon Getty’s political evolution and public comments
Getty is the heir to oil magnate J. Paul Getty’s vast fortune. His father founded Getty Oil, and for a time the family controlled significant stakes in the company before the oil business was sold.
Getty also co-owns the PlumpJack wine and hospitality group with California Governor Gavin Newsom. Over the decades, he has donated more than $463 million to philanthropic causes, especially in arts and education across the San Francisco Bay Area.
His political giving shifted notably over time. While he backed Republican candidates and causes in the 1980s, by the mid-1990s he was supporting Democrats. Since Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, Getty has donated roughly $4.5 million to Democratic or anti-Trump groups, including the "Need to Impeach" PAC in 2018.
In a brief interview with Nob Hill Gazette, when asked what he would do if he had a magic wand, he quipped that he wished Trump “would get a long lasting case of laryngitis, That’s the worst I’ll do.”
